Rebels target Iraqi refinery as Iran says it could intervene in conflict
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SUNNI rebels battled their way into the biggest oil refinery in Iraq yesterday, and the president of neighboring Iran raised the prospect of intervening in a sectarian war that threatens to sweep across Middle East frontiers.
Sunni fighters were in control of three quarters of the territory of the Baiji refinery north of Baghdad, after a morning of heavy fighting at gates defended by elite troops who have been under siege for a week.
A lightning advance has seen Sunni fighters rout the Shiite-led government’s army and seize the main cities across the north of the country since last week.
The fighters are led by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant which aims to build a Sunni caliphate ruled on mediaeval precepts, but also include a broad spectrum of more moderate Sunnis furious at what they see as oppression by Baghdad.
Some international oil companies have pulled out foreign workers. The head of Iraq’s southern oil company, Dhiya Jaffar, said Exxon Mobil had conducted a major evacuation and BP had pulled out 20 percent of its staff. He criticized the moves, as the areas where oil is produced for export are mainly in the Shiite south and far from the fighting.
Washington and other Western capitals are trying to save Iraq as a united country by leaning hard on Shiite Prime Minister to reach out to Sunnis. Maliki met Sunni and Kurdish political opponents overnight, concluding with a frosty, carefully staged joint appearance at which an appeal for national unity was read out.
But so far Maliki’s government has relied almost entirely on his fellow Shiites for support, with officials denouncing Sunni political leaders as traitors. Shiite militia — many believed to be funded and backed by Iran — have mobilized to halt the Sunni advance, as Baghdad’s million-strong army, built by the United States, crumbles.
Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani made the clearest declaration yet that the Middle East’s main Shiite power, which fought a war against Iraq that killed a million people in the 1980s, was prepared to intervene to protect Iraq’s great shrines of Shiite imams, visited by millions of pilgrims each year.
“Regarding the holy Shi’a shrines in Karbala, Najaf, Kadhimiya and Samarra, we announce to the killers and terrorists that the great Iranian nation will not hesitate to protect holy shrines,” Rouhani said in an address to a crowd on live TV.
Iraqi troops are holding off Sunni fighters outside Samarra north of Baghdad, site of one of the main Shiite shrines. The fighters have vowed to carry their offensive south to Najaf and Kerbala, seats of Shiite Islam since the Middle Ages.
Saudi Arabia, the region’s main Sunni power, said Iraq was hurtling toward civil war. Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, in words clearly aimed at Iran and at Baghdad’s Shiite rulers, deplored the prospect of “foreign intervention” and said governments need to meet “legitimate demands of the people.”
The Baiji refinery is the biggest source of fuel for domestic consumption in Iraq.
The refinery was shut on Tuesday and foreign workers flown out by helicopter.
An official speaking from inside the refinery said the militants were in control of the production units, administration building and four watch towers.”
However, the government denied the refinery had fallen.
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